He was still very white, but to all appearance calm and self-possessed, when he re-entered the house and resumed his seat on the table. He had given Esmeralda time to master her emotion, and she looked up at him now with a smile more pitiful than tears.
“I’ve really told you all now, Varley,” she said in a whisper. “I’ve left him; I’m no longer the Marchioness of Trafford. Why, I am a duchess! The old duke—he was very good to me, Varley, and I loved him!”—her eyes filled with tears, and she sighed—“he died the night I ran away, and never knew, thank God!”
“A duchess!” said Varley, grimly.
“Yes. A strange duchess, Varley!” She laughed sadly. “But all that’s done with now. I have left it all behind, never to go back to it. I want to be plain Esmeralda of Three Star once more—Esmeralda Howard, Varley, if you will have me. I’m going to be just as I was before—before I went away. Ah, how I wish I had never gone! Everybody—you and Mother Melinda, and all the boys—loved me and were good to me, though I was only a poor girl without even a name.”
His face twitched.
“That’s so,” he said, hoarsely.
“In England, London, they only care for your money. No, let me be just; that’s not true. There were one or two—the duke, a young girl, Lady Wyndover—who were fond of me. But the rest—” She shuddered. “Ah! it’s better to be here, Varley, with only a couple of dresses, and short of boots and shoes, with just a hut to live in, but warm, loving hearts around you, than to reign over there a great lady, a duchess, with more dresses than you know what to do with, with diamonds that only make people envy and hate you because they’re better than theirs. There’s bad luck here sometimes, and it’s rough and ready, but”—she stretched out her arms with a gesture almost fierce—“but it’s heaven here compared with the false hell over there.”
He was terribly moved, and the thin hand with which he rolled up a cigarette shook so that the tobacco fell upon the table.
“So I have come back, Varley,” she said, “and I want you to help me to forget all—all that has happened; to take me as your little girl again, to be Esmeralda of Three Star once more. I think the boys will be glad to have me back, won’t they?”
“We’ll see presently,” he said, laconically.